Category Archives: Editor’s Blog

Renewing the United States’ long-standing sanctions on Zimbabwe for another year, President Donald Trump stated that “the actions and policies of certain members of the Government of Zimbabwe and other persons to undermine Zimbabwe’s democratic processes or institutions continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States”.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s ongoing brutal crackdown on opposition supporters, rights defenders, labour leaders, and ordinary Zimbabweans, and recent Internet blockade, “betray promises to create a new Zimbabwe,” said the U.S. State Department in a statement issued this week.

In yet another clear manifestation of Zimbabwe’s burgeoning digital authoritarianism, the Mnangagwa regime imposed a total blockade on the Internet in a futile attempt to conceal security forces’ “systematic torture” and extrajudicial killing of more than a dozen people during last week’s protests against the president’s hiking of fuel price by 150%.

Zimbabwe security forces killed seven unarmed protesters in Harare just after the Southern African country’s first election without Robert Mugabe on the ballot. Nearly two months later, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s Zanu PF government continues to persecute the opposition while proposing a post-Mugabe economy that favours unfettered global capitalism.

In yet another example of the burgeoning digital authoritarianism of President Emmerson Mnangaga’s post-Mugabe Zimbabwe, police recently charged a Twitter user for retweeting a tweet parodying Priscilla Chigumba, the chairperson of the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission.

ABOUT US

The Zimbabwean Progressive

The Zimbabwean Progressive is an independent publication dedicated to producing fearless, progressive, adversarial, unapologetic and activism-oriented journalism situated right at the intersection of politics, technology and human rights.

The Zimbabwean Progressive is published by Obert Madondo, an Ottawa-based political blogger, publisher, and former political aide to a prominent Zimbabwean politician. Obert has previously worked as an international development administrator in Zimbabwe and Canada.

Obert also publishes Charity Files, an independent publication dedicated to journalism in the global giving public’s interest, and The Canadian Progressive, an independent publication dedicated to producing fearless, progressive, adversarial, unapologetic and activism-oriented Canadian journalism situated right at the intersection of politics, technology and human rights.